Category Archives: Forensic Psychology

Introduction

“Any
Kind Of Antisocial Behavior, Which Is Punishable By Law Or Norms, Stated By
Community,” Can Be Stated As Criminal Behavior.

Criminal
behavior study is to understand the behavior of criminal and find some answer
of the questions such as:

Why do criminals commit an offence?

Who are they?

How do they think?

What do they do?

A risk
factor in criminality is anything in a persons psychology, what will somewhat
increase possibility, that he/she will get involved in a criminal activity.
These may include:

Behavior disorder,

Lack of education,

Media influence,

Poor personal temperament,

Low IQ,

Antisocial beliefs,

Influence of society

Poor parenting, etc…

How To Measure Criminal Behavior?

Criminal behavior usually is
measured by:

Arrests and charges,

Self-reported offences.

Actual crime rates.

Causes Of Criminal behavior

Family issues– Children with violent parents are more likely
to become violent through learned behaviors.

Financial problems, or starvation – When A person has to struggle
every day just to fulfil his/her basic needs, the probability that they commit
crime to complete their desire.

Socioeconomic status – Many feels inferior or low because
of their lower middle or poor class lifestyle and sometimes to gain high status
they choose wrong path.

Genetics – Any type of psychological problem
or mental disorder such as anxiety problem, aggression, etc.

Mental illness– More than half the populations in
jails and state and federal prisons have some kind of mental illness according
to national institute of mental health.

Theories Of Criminal Behavior

Three
Broad Models Of Criminal Behaviors Are The Following:

Sociological Models

PsychologicalModels

Biological models

Psychological Approaches

Crime control policy based on psychological principles targets individuals and tries to prevent criminal behavior from this point.

Any policy aimed at preventing crime by targeting persons such as training, education, promotion of self-awareness, rehabilitation, resocialization or identification risks of criminal behavior are psychological in nature.

Some fundamental assumptions of psychological theories of criminality are following:

Normality is generally defined by social consensus.

The individual is the primary unit of analysis in psychological theories.

Criminal behavior may be purposeful for the individual in so far as it addresses certain felt needs.

Defective, or abnormal, mental processes may have a variety of causes, i.e., A diseased mind, inappropriate learning or improper conditioning, the emulation of inappropriate role models, and adjustment to inner conflicts. (Mischel, 1968.)

Sociological Approaches

According to social control theory, if
social bounds of a person is weak, he/she will more likely conduct a criminal
act, because people care what others thinks of them and try to conform with
social expectations because of their attachment to others.

Sociological notions of
criminality define as:

How the contradictions of all of
these interacting groups contribute to criminality.

Attempting to connect the issues of
the individual’s criminality with the broader social structures and cultural
values of society, familial, or peer group.

Criminality is viewed from the point
of view of the social construction of criminality and its social causes.

Biological Approaches

Biological
theories purport, that criminal behavior is caused by some flaw in individual’s
biological makeup.

According
to Raine Study, This physical flaw could be due to…

Heredity,

Neurotransmitter dysfunction,

Brain abnormalities that were caused by either of the above, improper development, or trauma.

Many theories are sharing
biological approaches such as:

Trait And Psychodynamic Trait Theories,

Lombroso’s Theory,

Y Chromosome Theory And Others.

There are several types of
crime control, which involve artificial interference in human biology such as

Psychosurgery,

Chemical Methods Of Control,

Brain Stimulation And Others.

How to
control it?

There are
several types of crime control, which involve artificial interference in human
biology such as Psychosurgery, chemical methods of control, brain stimulation
and others.

Psychodynamic Therapy

This theory was developed by Sigmund Freud in the late 1800’s and has
then become a significant theory in the history of criminality (Siegel, 2005).

The theory is a three-part structure consisting of the id, the ego and
the super ego.

The id is considered the underdeveloped of primitive part of our markup.
It controls our need for food, sleep and other basic instinct. This part is
purely focused on instant gratification.

The ego controls the id by setting up boundaries.

The superego is the change of judging the situation through morality
(Siegel, 2005)

Psychosurgery

Brain
surgery to control behavior has rarely been applied to criminal behavior.
Certainly much more common between the 1930’s to the late 1970’s there were
over 40,000 frontal lobotomies performed. Lobotomies were used to treat a wide
range of problems from depression, to schizophrenia.

Today
the lobotomy has fallen out of favour due medications used to control behavior,
although some view the use of medications as equivalent to a lobotomy (e.g.,
see Breggin, 2008).

Psychosurgery
appears to be an option that will most likely not be put into use due to the
stigma associated with it.

Chemical methods of control

The use of pharmacological
treatments to try to control crime has been on going in two major areas:

Chemical castration for sex offenders and Pharmacological
Interventions for drug or alcohol addicts.

Sometimes mentally ill people in the
criminal justice system been ordered to take medications to treat their mental
illness.

Other pharmacological interventions
to control crime seem plausible and are being investigated, but do not appear
to have been widely used.

Others Methods

Deep brain stimulation is used for some disorders such as Parkinson’s
disease, but has yet been investigated for criminal behavior.

Biological theorists have advocated changes in diet to deal with
criminality (Burton, 2002) and better relations between parents.

There is also the famous genetic XYY combination that was once thought
to be a marker for a criminal type, but as it turned out these individuals were
found to be less intelligent or more likely to have learning difficulties as
opposed to being criminal types.

Principles to remember

We Have Strong Tendencies To Pay Special Attention To Negative Information And At The Same Time, Powerful Tendencies To Expect Things To Turn Out Well. Beware Of Both Because They Can Generate Serious Errors In Social Thoughts.

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